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[denuseri]

No, science claims only that there is no evidence for an afterlife.

Now you speak for all Science? Didn't think so, some scientists are exploring such things.

EVERY religion claims the existence of an afterlife without any evidence.

The evidence is right there in front of your face everytime you open your eyes.

Science's sole claim is that a lack of evidence for the existence of something is NOT equivalent to evidence FOR it's existence.

Actually science can't by your definition claim anything about god one way or the other becuase it lacks the ability at present to make a proper experiement.

How do we know there are no dragons? (Apart from the Kimodo variety.)

We dont.

How do we know there are no unicorns, or centaurs, or any of zillions of other made-up creatures and places?

They actually know where the unicorn myths were drawn from, and we even have some today though they are not horses with horns.

Can we prove that Burroughs' Barsoom does not exist on Mars?

Not until we go there with more than a few robots.

There is no way to prove that any of these things do NOT exist. But that doesn't make them real, regardless of how many people "feel" they do.

It also doesnt make them just a fantasy or made up story or any other derogative associative adjetive you want to use.

Basically, when a theist says, "There IS an afterlife" he's saying that he BELIEVES there is an afterlife, despite the fact that there is no actual evidence of it.

Or he or she is saying that they know there is and you simply refuse to accept their conviction.

When a scientist, or an atheist, says "there is NOT an afterlife", he's saying that there is no rational reason to accept the existence of something for which there is no verifiable evidence.

And yet they allways seem to resort to being unreasonable and unrational themselves when debating it and again as for evidence, no amount will suffice to convience them otherwise.


Not even close. Religion flourishes in the perpetuation of ignorance, keeping the believers away from any knowledge that contradicts dogma.

Then why is it, that religions promote learning and wisdom?

Why is it all that lost knowledge about math and science and such from the classical era was preserved by the theologians (both muslim and christian) when it would have otherwise been lost to us?

Science flourishes by fighting ignorance, relishing knowledge, even if (one might even say, especially if) it contradicts scientific dogma.

Religion also flourishes in bringing people from the darkness of ignorance into the light of understanding. Even/ especially in some cases: if it contradicts current dogma's be they religious, scientific or philosophical in origins.


With a story! Regardless of how old or how well known the story is, it's still just a story! And when facts intervene and contradict the story, (and sometimes they confirm it) the historical reaction of most religions has been to slay the messenger, to perpetuate the story.

Nice excuse but hardely holds up to actual historical records, despite popular opinion the victor doesnt allways write the history.

Tradition may be nice for maintaining the status quo and molding conformity. But sooner or later you have to finally stand up and say, "The Emperor has no clothes!" Or the egg-head as no clue!

I'll grant you that. But it still tells them that there will be an afterlife, even though there is no evidence for such a thing. No evidence according to you perhaps.

To some people, even an eternity in hell might seem better than complete oblivion. To some people, an eternity in the Catholic heaven (the one I'm most familiar with) would BE a hell.

And to others hell and heavan both exisist within the duality of human kinds existence and the afterlife is an illussion of time displacment that occurs from our perspective for an eternity. And then there are those guys running around the history channel proving ghosts exist, go figure.

Passed down from someone who made it up to begin with! Again, just because it's an old story doesn't mean it's accurate. The world is not flat, the sky is not a carpet with little lanterns hanging from it. The sun is not a glowing chariot being driven daily across the sky.

No its quite obvious that ancient discriptions and explanations for some things were metaphorical.


Such as what? Have they learned that there really was a census in Palestine near the time of Jesus' birth? Have they found eyewitness accounts of his life, aside from those purported to be written by his followers? Have they even found any archeological evidence that hundreds of thousands of people spent 40 years wandering through Sinai? Not that I've heard!

Obviously we go to different sources for not only our news, but our science and theology as well.

And please respectfully but wtf is up with the fixation on jews and christianity, they are not the only religion or philosophy in the world that the author and other atheisits seem to think is their mission in life to destroy through any means possible insulting any religious adhereants at every turn as often as possible whenever they get a chance.


Oh, I see. So demons inhabiting our bodies were just euphemisms for bacterial infections?

Appears so yes.

They actually knew how vast the universe was, but only wanted to make it sound like the Earth was all there was?

All they had to do to see how small they were was look around and due to their planet bound perspective it did take them a long long time to figure out otherwise.

Please. Language and tradition only go so far. Perpetuating those traditions and stories in the light of real evidence is no different than believing in fairy tales.

Please. Language and tradition are just as important as anything else, if not more so, without them we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes as our ancestors. And perpetuating a dogma of belief (which is exactly what atheism is) without expounding upon its morality in fact divorcing the two, is perhaps the only fairy tale here.


Yes, there is, and this article explains it. It's COMFORTABLE. It's far less frightening to believe in an afterlife than not. It's far more exciting to believe in flying saucers than not. Neither is a valid reason for holding such beliefs.

I find nothing whatsoever comfortable about it in the slightest. And again, you, like the other atheists sem to allways insist on being derogatory...why is that I wonder?


Quite true, but the longer we look for evidence of something without finding anything, the less likely it becomes that it DOES exist.

In some peoples opinions maby but not all. After atheism kills religion it will go to work on Love itself perhaps?


So you're saying that Muslims who have near death experiences see the same things as Christians? Do Buddhist's with those experiences catch glimpses of the Islamic Paradise? In fact, the things which people claim to see during near death experiences are remarkably similar to what they expect to see, in the vast majority of cases.

Which ussually involves many many simularities, such as a feeling of timelessness, being outside of one's self, floating, being in a tunnel of some kind, experiencing euphoria, or anguish and despair etc etc.

If everyone saw the same, or even similar, things, then all of the religions would preach about the same, or similar, afterlife. They do not.

Becuase they interpet the experience differently is all.


What difference does that make? You are confusing an emotional issue with a purely subjective one. Someone who is dying is not necessarily a reliable source of information, nor is someone who is saddened by a loved one's death. These are the very kinds of emotional responses which religions are notorious for exploiting.

Or "explaining". And the human being is a creature of emotions, not a machine. Exclude part and the whole will suffer.

I would venture to guess, based on things I've read elsewhere, that Myers is far more versed in the religious texts and dogma than the average fundamentalist believer.

He may be, but his argument didn't sound as if it came from anyone so well versed in such topics, in fact it wasn't any better than your own, imho it sounded about the same in every regard except you strike me as being more honest.

Certainly far more versed than I am. I freely admit my lack of in-depth knowledge. But then, I don't know all that much about ancient Oriental fairy tales, either.

Fairy tales have nothing to do with the topic of this thread. Please do stop trying to be so derogative its certiantly not helpful in any way shape or form to your argument.


He's arguing because religious leaders are constantly trying to force their poisonous bile down our throats.

Funny, I don't see religious leaders running hilly nilly around the nieghbor hoods with funnels and jars of religious bile.

He's arguing because millions of people around the world die needlessly due to religious intolerance and hatred.

Far more die over money and resource aquistion by far. Even in our current war on terror.

He's arguing because he knows, as I do, that people would rather believe what feels good than what is right.

Which is why aethism is so appealing to some I guess, it feels so good to them to think they are the only ones out of so many to have gotten it so right in their opinion.


And who says we do not have a purpose? Atheists by their own definition beg the question.

Just because I don't spend my life on my knees telling some god how great he is, just so I can go to heaven and spend eternity doing the same damned thing, doesn't mean I don't have a purpose.

Who said that was mankinds purpose? I never heard any such thing put forth as mankind's sole purpose, not even as my time as a lutheran. Again I ask,,,why constantly resort to being derogative? Is it in the aethiest handbook somewhere to resort to sophistry or be derogative when logic alone fails?

I have a family. They provide a purpose. I have a life to live, and that provides a purpose. It's the only life I will ever have, and I want to live it as much and as well as I can. That's a purpose. If your purpose is to be good and die and go to heaven, why don't you just let yourself die so you can be with your god? After all, isn't that your sole purpose?

See above. Religious people have allmost all of the same self declared purposes you just expoused.


Ultimately, religions provide a path to follow which, supposedly, leads to some form of salvation or life after death or some way to continued existence. Whether you want to call it paradise or not, it's the easy way out. The belief that something of us will go on, despite there being no evidence for such a belief.


Ultimately, religion, like philosophy, or any other belief system (yes such as science or athiesm) is what it is, and one gets out of it, what one puts into it.


Why is it that theist can't seem to understand that atheism involves a LACK of belief. NOT believing in something is not the same as believing that something is NOT.

Shrugs Logic 101 is my guess.

If A is in opposition to B

And A represents belief in god.

then B (regardless of how it is worded in its expression of the opposite) still expressess the opposite which is a lack of or a dis-belief or refutation of A.


sophistry - 1 : subtly deceptive reasoning or argumentation
- 2 : an argument apparently correct in form but actually invalid
I fail to see where the sophistry is in claiming that religions have no verifiable evidence to support their claims of a divine being or an afterlife. I realize it's hardly fair to fight fantasy with truth, or to counter wishful thinking with facts. But that's reality. Live with it. There you go, there is your sophistry for you.

And here we have real sophistry, claiming the author has said something which he has not actually said. No one claims that atheism is superior to faith. In fact, he says quite plainly that faith has far more comfort to offer people than atheism. He didnt have to say it specifically , nor do any oth the other aethiests, not when they imply it every chance they get with derogatory remarks and sohpistry. What he IS saying is that reality, cold, hard, brutal reality, trumps wishful thinking every time.

No what he is really saying is that only Aethists have any clue as to what the world is really like and the rest of the planet is stupid or child like or not as superior as the aethists think they are. And fyi I never said I and you both wouldnt use sophistry from time to time.

No amount of faith or religious dogma will allow you to jump off a ten story building and float gently down to the ground without suffering a single injury. Why? Because gravity is real and it's (fairly for the most part) predictable and it can kill you.

Its not ussually the fall or the gravity itself that kills, so much as the sudden impact with the ground.

A good, scientifically designed parachute might save you, or a soundly engineered parafoil. But hand-waving and magical incantations won't help you worth a damn.

But many a person who has fallen and survived when such scientifcally sound contraptions have failed them can recount having said a prayer on the way down, and who knows, that may have helped them all the same. You certianly don't know for certian that it didn't.


Oh, I can definitely sense our smallness. Just looking at the universe around us, the vast emptiness of space, how hostile and dangerous even the world on which we have evolved can be, makes me fall small and afraid. And God has nothing to do with it.

Or he or she, or it had Everything to do with it!


Oh? Ask a Muslim whether or not he's afraid of recanting his faith. Even if he wanted to, his religion would demand his death! How many women honestly believe they are only property, as so many religions preach? And how many of those women are afraid to speak out against those preachings? How many non-believers are hiding in churches, afraid to proclaim their non-belief because of the fear of ridicule and ostracism which they will most likely incur? And sure, it works both ways, no argument about that. The point is that it takes far more courage to state the truth when it directly contradicts the perceived truth of the masses. And believing in an afterlife, despite a total lack of evidence for such a condition, is simply hiding, from fear of obliteration.

It isnt what your saying it is eaither though, which is my point. Where you see a resonable aethists making a well thought out logical dissicsion I see an individual who has been assualted with dogma and then makes a consious choice to dis-believe or not believe based on what they are told is a total lack of evidence, I see, some people making a speculative at best conclussion based on no actual science thats got less of a foundation to stand on than the religions it so desperately wishes to replace.


I thought I was being honest. I'm not trying to be manipulative.

I didnt say you were, at the time I was refering to the author or the article you linked.

I'm trying to tell the truth.

As you see it. I obviously see it otherwise.

However, if you can provide any real evidence for an afterlife, or even for gods, of any stripe, I'm sure that I'm not the only one who would be delighted to see it.


I have all the evidence I need allready. But if you can come up with any actual evidence that I am wrong, I will be more than happy to conceed the point. And saying you cant prove a negative is no argument btw. its just an admission of inability to deliver the goods.

Calling someone a liar just because they don't happen to agree with you is not providing evidence.

Then why call all these non-atheists liars?

Claiming that your particular belief system is the one true belief, despite all the belief systems in existence today and throughout history, is not proof either.

Then why do the aethists do it too?

And claiming something must be true just because 99% of the people in the world believe it to be true is not proof.

It may not be proof, but it sure seems strange that the vast majoritry of the world population seems to think its real to them.

Provide facts and evidence. Or propose an hypothesis which can be tested with proper procedures and practices. I'll wait.

Yes, please do provide some actual facts or evidence to support your own claims it would be so very nice for a change.

The burden of proof isnt on my shoulders anyway, Im not the one promoting some relatively new conceptual hypothisis (which is what aethism is a theologial hypothisis just like every other religion) . I believe what I believe becuase it feels right to do so, just like everyone else who believes in somthing, or a lack thereof believes.

and btw here is a nice link about the topic if anyone is interested in knowing what it is and is not by definition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism